Update 6: We have
finally arrived in Cho Oyu basecamp! We are happy to be
here, although part of our equipment is still in Old
Chinese Basecamp (2 days walk from here). We partly
solved the yak issue. We hope to welcome the last yak
shift tomorrow (Thursday).

Basecamp will be our home for the next month. The coming
days we'll spend our energy to build a comfortable base
from where we'll work our way up the mountain. We are
early in the season and the first team to arrive in
basecamp this year. The Cho Oyu looks impressive from
close by. High on the mountain, we still need some more
snow for a continuous ski descent from the summit.
Luckily it's snowing right now!

Our
basecamp is situated at 5715 m above seal level, still
2486 m to go! The temperature at night is -20 degrees
Celsius. The air pressure is currently 504 hPa, (half
the pressure at sea level). Apart from some breathless
awakenings at night (Joost), minor headaches (Greg) and
some episodes of diarrhea (Herman), we feel great!

This weekend we plan our first climb up the mountain to
carry the first loads to camp 1 at 6400 m.